Some things are too frightening to think about. Imagine being in Canada. Or imagine being approached by a vagrant. Now imagine both these things at once. Oh, and the vagrant is approaching you at 60 miles per hour. And he’s riding a shopping cart filled with recyclables. Welcome to your nightmare – the inevitable explosion of aluminum and adrenaline.

Murray Siple has created the documentary Carts of Darkness which profiles Vancouver’s reckless homeless who take to the hills and come back down with cans, bottles, velocity – seemingly everything except control. We respect the objectivity Mr. Siple uses in documenting this tragedy. As can be imagined in a scenario involving high speeds and tramps, an unfortunate end often awaits both the shopping cart and its appended bum.

The urban iditarod. It is quickly shaping up to be a national wink wink nudge nudge excuse to maim and defile shopping carts. This past Saturday the carnage was taking place in Los Angeles. On this day our four-wheeled friends lived in the City of Angst.

The tradition of having the huskie-less Iditarod started, of course, in San Francisco. And – like veganism, sandals and pedestrian right-of-way – the bad idea fanned out from the bay to points across the globe.

The Center for Prevention of Shopping Cart Abuse is currently formulating a plan to counter the popularity of the urban iditarod. We cannot publish details at this time except to say that it may involve salmonella-laced beer.